Much of the business press over the weekend was asking whether Microsoft has struck a good deal with its mega-expensive takeover of Skype.

It is a useful moment to take a broader view of the difficulties of creating value (both as a company and as an external investor) within the froth around emergent new platforms.

Many of the Twitterati and the Fackbookists and Linkedinners talk as if the current, very early incarnation of Social Media is a fully developed end point and that these first generation tools of which they make fantastical claims are finished, final and permanent parts.

There is huge flux but also a couple of certain trends: the expansion of web-based communications and services ever deeper into all aspects of our social and commercial lives; convergence across information, entertainment and communication.

Now, Skype does speak (literally!) to both of those core trends, so it is indeed potentially a major linking route.

However, there is not a lot about Skype that is deeply proprietary and the price paid seems astronomical. On a more general note, it is still uncertain that any of these stepping stone technologies towards a much grander and over-arching linkage will establish any long-term value generation.

At the fast moving forefront of any great technological revolution, it is very difficult to evaluate what is forming a relatively stable bigger picture (when evolution takes over from revolution for a while) and what are just transitory brush strokes in a much richer-textured build-up.

The purchase of Skype smacks of Microsoft, which still enjoys amazingly profitable revenue streams from its core operating system and software businesses, continuing to struggle to enter, never mind define, the emergent picture of the new web world.

If it were possible, perhaps Microsoft would be better exercised in the leverage of its vast cash reserves by seeking to take us directly to how things are likely to look in, say, ten years from now. That, however, will take the rediscovery of the speculative and messianic fervour which first made Microsoft great, which is quite a long time ago now.

In an outpost like Manchester, it is vital that producers figure out whether they are creating some measure of value for the here and now, or whether they are devoting their efforts speculatively towards the very uncertain steps of far away giants.

The problem with stepping stones is that they frequently get washed away, by-passed with new bridges or crossings, or simply left in useless side channels as rivers change direction.

- Malcolm Evans is a commentator on Manchester corporate finance and on broader issues of economic development